Alternate history is a big book business and with the relative success (since viewing numbers aren’t released) of The Man in the High Castle, I was put in the mood to think about what might have been if….
…either Miller or Anheuser-Busch, as they were once known, had not left a gaping blank space for craft beer to exploit.
Now I am not the fantasist that PKD was but have concocted a scenario that I call the Theory of Three. That if either of the two marketing (oops, I mean brewing) titans had made just three beers, they could have at least stalled the craft brewing revolution if not outright curtailed it.
Now these are very specific beer styles. We all know the history of how so many of our brewing pioneers traveled to Europe and found beer. Big, flavorful beer in England, Belgium and Germany and returned home to find none of it or extremely old stale versions of it dusty on store shelves. This void is what pushed many people to illegally homebrew and eventually to open up small breweries.
But imagine if back in 1960, you could head to Don Draper’s jolly old liquor haunt and find:
A) An amber ale
B) A Fruit wheat ale
C) A High ABV Stout
Why those three? You would expect that a pale ale or a Steam beer would be on that list to forestall the two California trailblazers but the rise of hops took longer to ferment and though Anchor Steam is a slightly different flavor profile from an amber they are cousins in my skewed style book.
Back to the list, Amber Ale is there because most brewpubs made this an integral part of their core line-up. If Budweiser American Amber had been around back then brewing purists would have avoided it like the plague and what style would have taken its place as a gateway beer for the curious with delicate palates? Suddenly, the brewpubs that survived the purge of the microbrew to craft shake-out are at risk. Plus, New Belgium created a huge company that may well sell this year on the back of the simple Fat Tire amber. You pre-empt that and Fort Collins doesn’t become Fort Collins beer destination and the Boulder, Denver beer Bermuda Triangle is suddenly wobbly.
Two words times two for you. Blue Moon. Shock Top. Those brands and primarily their version of a Belgian Wit bier are the only ones that seem to have any sort of shelf staying power. All sorts of crafty rolls of the dice have come and gone. The Bud American Amber being a good case study. But the slightly orange hazy beer has lived on. If this was on tap in 1960, people coming back from Belgium would have had a go-to beer to remind them of their trip and may not have needed to brew all the saisons and sours that are deeper cuts of the Belgian beer scene. Belgian style breweries would have been severly short-circuited. Wit was the hit single that got people interested in the band’s B-Sides.
Finally, a big and bad stout because the other big arrow in the craft quiver is it’s non-sesionability. If Miller Stout was next to Miller Amber and Miller Wit and Miller Lite, well there might not be a shortage of bourbon barrels to age craft beer in. While the first two beers take away the gateway, the stout takes away the next step beer and would cover their right flank. Home brewers and the pro brewers that would have come eventually would now have to work in the margins. The color and strength spectrum would be covered. And they could have done it with a stout that came in at a paltry 7.5% or 8%.
And the beauty is that they wouldn’t have to have been more than middling quality. They could be blandified corporate versions. Again to return to Bud American Ale, it was a thin version of Fat Tire. But it would have been a leap from regular Bud flavor wise and would like less like a brand extension / stab at craft brewing. It would be seen as a brewer challenging their customers taste buds. Blue Moon would have re-created the Coors aura that it lost when it became nationally distributed.
I still believe that Craft beer would have emerged much like Starbucks emerged from a pile of instant coffee and people stopped eating Velveeta (I don’t want to know if people eat that, so no comments on cheese product). But the trajectory would have been much different.
Imagine a game of Frogger with two slow moving cars and no river. That is the breach that craft beer stepped into. But if Miller, Budweiser and Coors had seen the future, they could have changed it with just three beers.
Peel the Label is an occasional series where I opine about the big picture of craft beer and blogging without photos, videos or links.